Video devices are any type of device used to capture, store, process or play back video. Video devices generally work with a video captured by some manner of video recording device, such as a video camera. A video recording device may be used to record video of persons, events, scenes, etc. In addition, some video recording devices may be capable of adding effects directly into the video.
Many video processing devices exist that cannot record video but are capable of storing and/or processing it. One example is a video editor device. Home computers, when configured with video processing software, may be able to store and process digital video data, including processing operations such as editing, adding effects, trimming, etc. The processed video may then be electronically transferred to other devices or played back to users. Another type of video processing device is a playback device such as a VCR or a DVD player that displays videos to a user.
Video recording devices have become very popular, especially for home use. As they become cheaper, they have become increasingly widespread. As a result, many non-professional videographers are capturing videos.
Most video tapes contain multiple video scenes. A video scene may be defined as a continuous portion of video having a common subject over a contiguous period of time and in the same or contiguous space. A scene therefore contains a story or at least contains an independent semantic meaning.
Each video scene typically comprises one or more video shots. Each shot is a video segment captured from a record button press to a stop button press, i.e., a shot is a continuous capture period.
Captured video may be processed at a later time. The processing may be performed for various reasons, including imposing some form of organization that is useful for viewing. The processing therefore may include segmenting the video, such as by inserting indexes into the video. The segmenting is done so that particular video scenes or video shots may be easily found. In addition, the segmenting may enable a person to later determine what is stored on a particular tape.
The problem with most video recordings is that they are typically captured to magnetic tape. Magnetic tape is heavily used for video recording because it is widely available and can store large quantities of video. Magnetic tapes are also cheap and easy to use, with one exception. The exception is that videographers end up with many different scenes captured on a single tape, and may accumulate many tapes. Therefore, video segmenting and indexing becomes a large, complicated, and time-consuming task. The same problem exists for other types of storage media as well, such as solid-state memory, memory disc, optical memory, etc.
The prior art has approached the video indexing and segmenting problem in several ways. In a first prior art approach, the photographer (or other user) must manually fast-forward or rewind through a tape in order to find a particular video shot or scene. Moreover, the user may occasionally have to pause to play the tape in order to see if the desired scene has been found. The user may then still need to do additional fast-forwarding or rewinding once the shot or scene has been found in order to find the beginning of the shot or scene. Then the video indexing or segmenting can be performed. This manual searching process may need to be done many times per tape.
The first prior art approach therefore has many drawbacks. Finding a particular video scene may be very difficult and very time consuming. This difficulty will be greater if the user is searching for a shot or scene that is relatively short (i.e., it will be harder to locate the desired video scene by fast-forwarding or rewinding). The problem is compounded when the user must find multiple scenes and therefore must move backwards and forwards many times in a recorded video.
In a second prior art approach, professional video segmenting systems have been developed (such as part of a professional video editing system). However, these prior art video segmenting systems are focused on professionally produced video. They typically feature specialized expensive equipment and operate on recorded audio that is unlike audio data captured within a home video tape. The professional video segmenting systems of the prior art operate on audio that is generally separately captured and tightly controlled during capture, such as in a studio environment. The prior art video segmenting systems typically segment video wherein the audio component has been subjected to processing, such as filtering and noise control, regulation of the captured audio level, etc.
One drawback to the second prior art approach is that such professional video editing/segmenting systems are expensive and are designed for highly processed audio. Furthermore, the prior art professional video approach may not work satisfactorily on home audio that has varying capture levels and large amounts of background noise.
Another drawback is that the segmenting and indexing of the prior art professional approach operates through shot detection. The prior art professional segmenting approach analyzes video frames, separates the video into shots, and extracts one or more frames from each shot to represent it. The prior art video indexing and segmenting therefore cannot segment video into semantically meaningful video scenes, and is only capable of indexing and segmenting individual shots. This kind of indexing lacks semantic meaning because one scene or story may contain many shots, and there is no way to decide what shots are within one story. As a result, there may be too many index frames within a video tape or video file. As a result, the user cannot easily browse and retrieve the video segments.
Therefore, there remains a need in the art for improvements to video segmenting and indexing.